Japan-China Relations--PM Noda's 21 Hours in Beijing

Former U.S. ambassador to China and current U.S. presidential candidate Jon Huntsman is boringly repetitive in claiming that “the U.S. and China relationship is the most important and complex relationship in the world today.”

Whether or not Huntsman is right about the U.S., he would certainly be correct if speaking about Japan and the Japanese side of the Japan-China relationship. And to “important” and “complex” we could add the adjectives “prickly” and “enigmatic.” Coming to mind also would be “low key,” and—on the Japanese side--“defensive.” Also, not to be expressed in one word only, would be the extraordinary degree—even for what is already the highly symbolic art of diplomacy—of attention to and manipulation of symbols: the Oriental art of giving and denying “face.”

For evidence of this we need look no further that the December 25-26 visit of Prime Minister Noda to Beijing. In the 21 hours Noda spent there he was granted a 40 minute audience with the lame duck Party Secretary/President Hu Jintao and a one hour 20 minute session with lame duck Premier Wen Jiabao, but no meetings with Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang the men who will be elevated to the leading party and government positions at the 18th National Congress of the CCP in fall of next year and the 12th National People’s Congress in March 2013.

It was the first visit to China since Noda was sworn in as Prime Minister. His flight left Haneda for Beijing Capital International Airport at 11:17 am on December 25. From the Beijing airport he was whisked to the Chinese national agricultural exhibition pavilion, then to the Japanese embassy where he spoke to local Japanese residents. Following, he was delivered to the Great Hall of the People for the meeting with Premium Wen, which was followed by a welcoming dinner. Following the dinner, Noda’s group repaired to the nearby New Otani Chang Fu Gong Hotel (a nice hotel—standard rooms go for RMB 900--on Chang An Da Jie where I have stayed many times) for a press conference, and for the night’s stay.

The next morning, again in the Great Hall, Noda met, in quick succession, Wu Bangguo, the heavyweight but also lame duck chairman of the 11th National People’s Congress, and Party Secretary Hu. By 2:28 pm he was back on the tarmac at Haneda and at 3:06 was registering his return at the Imperial Palace.

What was the purpose of this visit? And what, if anything, really happened? I am not the only observer to wonder about the visit, or to question whether anything positive came out of it. Japan’s newspaper’s had a very hard time reporting anything. The Yomiuri Shimbun and Nihon Keizai Shimbun (but not Asahi) dutifully produced short editorials essentially repeating Noda’s talking points on Japan’s desire for China’s help to achieve a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula and the presumed mutual desire for stability during the current succession. Noda delivered a “gift” in the form of Japan’s decision to begin adding PRC RMB denominated sovereign bonds to its foreign reserve portfolio. He asked for, but did not receive, any sign of Chinese flexibility to their claims to sole development rights to gas fields in disputed areas under the East China Sea.

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun editorial offered that China has brought strategy toward Japan under its overall strategic policy toward the U.S. and is now vexed by the Obama administration’s “returning to Asia” rhetoric. Could Japan’s appeal for help on a non-nuclear Korea been met with a demand for U.S. withdrawal?

Was the Noda visit simply dictated by the perceived need not to allow a year to end without it? Presumably, even if this was not a “state visit,” Japan’s MOF requested that Noda be accommodated in a Chinese state guesthouse. He shunted to a Japanese hotel. Why did he feel the need to go, under such circumstances, and without being accorded the courtesy of meeting Xi and Li? The North Korean situation provided a useful topic of discussion, but the visit had to have been planned long before the crisis. In fact, by appearances, the trip was pointless and profitless, close to a humiliation.

If Noda had no more purpose for the visit than friendly relations, basically Japanese New Year’s aisatsu, surely China had more, and they probably achieved it.